


Illegitimi Non Carborundum

by GoldStarGrl



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, Mentions of Rape, Substance Abuse, mentions of csa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 04:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11154444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: Prompt: "I just want Dennis and Charlie getting high and bonding over mutual badbrain."Sometimes Dennis comes over Charlie's in the middle of the night. They get each other, when they're high.





	Illegitimi Non Carborundum

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SunnyRarePairs](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SunnyRarePairs) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> I just want Dennis and Charlie getting high and bonding over mutual badbrain. Maybe they figure out the oi oi oi thing. Maybe they discuss how there are certain things only the other person understands.

Charlie noticed there was a direct correlation between the times Dennis showed up at his door at three AM, wan with fingers trembling and hair mussed and sweaty, and the times Dennis deigned to sit with him on the carpet, their backs against his futon, and pass the glue back and forth, while Frank slept, snoring softly, a few feet away.

Dennis didn’t usually sniff glue - he said that he was a refined man, and if he was going to get high it was going to be off of something classy, like ecstasy tablets or marijuana from Amsterdam - but sometimes, in the dark, quiet moments of the night, he acquiesced.

People didn’t realize how much makeup Dennis usually wore until he didn’t have any on. Dark, waxy circles hung under his eyes, and a few dots of acne flamed on his chin. He looked like a rough sketch of his normal self, drawn with markers almost out of ink. But Charlie didn’t bring it up; Dennis would just snap that he wasn’t taking beauty advice from someone who only showered once a week.

“I gotta tell you man, I haven’t been sleeping well.” Dennis said, closing his eyes after a deep inhale. He handed the bottle back to Charlie.

“That sucks, dude. Why?” Charlie took a huff and handed it back to Dennis. Dennis stared down at it for a few seconds before he answered.

“I just don’t. Sometimes for days. I have to take caffeine pills.”

“Shit, _days?_ ”

“Eight days is the record.” Dennis said, with more than a hint of twisted pride. “Junior year of college.”

“Jesus.”

“Dee and I were sharing an apartment and she knocked me out with a cookie sheet, or it would have been longer.”

“What is it, you have nightmares or something?”

Dennis’ smile flickered. He took out his cell phone and glanced at it, even though the screen was dark. Charlie flopped sideways, onto his back.

“I don’t sleep good, either. Not unless someone is with me.”

Dennis raised an eyebrow and jutted his chin towards Frank's stomach rising and falling gently, unconsciously. “No shit.”

“No, but like, only some people. Like it used to be Mac, when we were little. He would let me come over and sleep in his bed with him because…” Charlie faded off. Even through his cloudy haze, a cold, sore feeling gripped his stomach and twisted it on itself. “But then he told me it was gay and we had to stop.”

Dennis rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything, again. He was quieter, on nights like this. The part of him that wanted to explain and grandstand and bolivate wasn’t awake, and for that Charlie was grateful.

“Frank’s good for sleeping too. Sometimes when I start freaking out a little bit, he’ll tell me dirty jokes or play Nightcrawlers with me.”

Something in Dennis’ expression hardened. “Weird.” He said, a bite of jealousy in his voice.

“Weirder than that elephant toy you slept with until, like, college?”

Dennis’s eyes flashed and he straightened up, indignant. “He wasn’t- _it_ wasn’t a toy, my mom got it for me when Dee and I were born. We went through a lot, together.” He tucked his hands under the opposite armpits, hugging his own chest. “Dee ripped him up, the bitch.”

"Fuck her.”

“Yeah.”

Something was loose in Charlie’s brain, knocked free in a high and fuzzy haze, letting thoughts that normally weren’t allowed out of their tight corners all the way down to his mouth. “My Uncle Jack used to stay in my room with me. He sucked. I would have to stay awake all night or he’d…or...”

Dennis clicked his tongue and took another hit. "I know he did, Charlie."

He reached out and clapped a hand on Charlie’s knee in some sort of comforting gesture.

Charlie blinked. "What?"

Dennis looked at him, his head cocked, like he couldn’t tell if Charlie was being serious. It was his _surely you can’t be that dumb, Charlie_ look. Charlie suddenly felt really pissed at him. Dennis shouldn’t make that face at him, especially not now, in this dark little corner of the night that they never told the rest of the gang about. And all this before Dennis opened his stupid mouth.

“I…” He shrugged. “I know you got molested.”

Charlie’s stomach twisted again, much tighter and harder; he thought he might hurl. He lunged forward and grabbed the glue back. “Fuck you, man.”

"You wrote an entire musical about it. I didn't think it was a secret."

“What? What are you talking about?” His hands felt numb. “That’s not what _Nightman_ is about.”

“Yeah. Okay, man.” Dennis snorted and made a grab for the glue. Charlie held it out of his reach and Dennis was too lazy to reach forward and _try_ for it.

“Don’t fucking act like you know something I don’t. You’re the one whose teacher raped him.”

Dennis pulled his legs up against his chest; he used to sit like that all the time when they were teenagers, fourteen, fifteen, Charlie remembered. Until he’d been sitting that way when they crashed Nikki Potnick car, and he broke both of his shins.

Dennis was laid up in splints for three months and learned to sit with both feet on the ground. “We fucked each other, Charlie, that’s what sex is.”

“Well yeah, when it’s with grown-ups. You just got like, preyed upon.” His stomach started to relax. _Just keep talking. Just keep pushing it back on him._

“I was willing, I understood what I was doing-” Dennis pressed his lips together and lifted both hands in the air. “I’m not having this discussion again. It was a lot, a long time ago, I was a kid.” He chuckled a little, but the noise trembled in his throat.

"Shit, is that why you kept your elephant toy?”

Dennis didn’t answer.

“I could probably sew it back together for you, man. If you still have the pieces.”

Dennis’ Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and he closed his eyes.

Charlie looked up at his ceiling. When the light was on he liked to find shapes in the smears of plaster. Even now, he traced the patterns he knew were there with his eyes. That one looked a little like a sailboat, or a rabbit.

“What are you staring at?” Dennis lay on his back next to him, his sweater folded under his head as a makeshift pillow. Charlie wasn’t sure how he got down there. Glue took chunks of time out of his mind, sometimes. Blink, a minute gone here, an hour vanished there. Charlie lifted his arm ninety degrees from his chest and pointed at the ceiling.

“There’s shapes. Look, umbrella.”

Dennis squinted. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Charlie grabbed Dennis’ own hand, lifted it, and guided it along the outline of the shape. Dennis didn’t look up, though. His body jerked and he turned his head to stare at Charlie, startled. Charlie let go of his hand.

“Sorry.”

Dennis shook his head. “You’re a good kid, Charlie.”

Charlie’s brow furrowed. “Okay, I’m a year older than you, though.” Some teacher made him repeat kindergarten, like that helped anything. Sometimes he wonder what would have happened if the rest of The Gang hadn’t caught up to him, if they still would have become friends.

Dennis grabbed his hand again, enclosed it in his own, and ran his thumb up and down the back of Charlie’s palm. He turned to look up at the ceiling again.

“She’s...sometimes I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about-” _What happened. “-_ her.”

Charlie chewed on his bottom lip and nodded. “Me too.” a pause. “Not about Mrs. Klinsky, about my-”

“I get it, Charlie.” Dennis took a long, deep huff of the glue and set the bottle on the ground in between them. Charlie turned back to the ceiling too.

He listened to Dennis’ breathing slow and deepen, his hand still clutched around Charlie’s. His own eyes, his bones and head, felt heavy.

Tomorrow, Dennis would wake up and slip out before Frank woke up and saw him, and then they would see each other at the bar and they wouldn’t talk about it, not until the next night like this, when their brains were bad again and they needed to sit with someone who wouldn’t...say anything, do anything.

Yeah. Dennis did get it.


End file.
